Position: 60°56.84’N, 4°58.10’E

Back in 2018, we installed a 4×4 matrix keyboard in the pilot house dash to control heating, air conditioning, the water heater, defroster, generator manual start, setting generator run times, turn on the 240V inverter, raise the TV lift, control the music throughout the boat, and display a variety of boat monitoring data on a LCD panel.

Over time, we’ve introduced 16-channel wireless remotes to perform the same functionality and also installed one on the pilot house dash. This made the original 4×4 matrix keyboard redundant, so we removed it along with some other unnecessary wiring. This is the pile of garbage we produced.

Position: 60°56.85’N, 4°58.11’E

Our Fire TV stick stopped working and it turned out to be a cable issue. Here we’ve got a couple of boxes of AV spare parts and cables out to troubleshoot the issue.

Position: 60°56.85’N, 4°58.11’E

Spitfire loves to investigate new spaces and whenever we open a locker or storage area he is inside to fast that we’ve begun to joke about having spare cats—every dark corner seems to have a large black cat inside. (Blog reader Steven Coleman started the joke in noticing Spitfire pictured with the spares in the post Managing Spares.) Here Spitfire is inside the locker underneath the guest stateroom floor, where we stow some of our spare AV cables and parts, with only his tail and hind legs visible.

Position: 60°57.81’N, 4°59.53’E

Fast ferry heading into the narrow channel Storsundet between Grimstadholmane and Storholmen as we are about to enter the Gulafjorden to the right.

Position: 60°58.07’N, 5°11.21’E

About to pass under the bridge across the mouth of Austgulfjorden, a branch off Gulafjorden. A heavy rain has been falling all day and the clouds are just starting to lift a bit.

Position: 60°58.04’N, 5°14.09’E

Rain-fed waterfall gushing down through the small settlement at Hanntveit in Austgulfjorden. When we returned out a day later, the waterfall was half this strength.

Position: 60°59.19’N, 5°18.59’E

Our anchorage at the head of Austgulfjorden in 38 ft (12m) of water on 150 ft (46m) rode.

Position: 60°59.19’N, 5°18.59’E

View to the beautiful anchorage at the head of Austgulfjorden off the settlement of Austgulen (clockwise from top left corner is the view forward, aft, starboard, and port).

Position: 60°59.19’N, 5°18.56’E

Local resident working a fishing net on the shore opposite our anchorage at the head of Austgulfjorden.

Position: 60°59.19’N, 5°18.58’E

This morning we got an email alert on the generator. It might appear a bit cryptic but it’s easy to read where it shows the current value of each parameter with the range of allowable values in square brackets immediately after. Here you can see the generator is running but it’s just started to produce zero volts and, as a consequence, it’s also producing zero amps.

We shut it off and investigated and found the generator field winding breaker had tripped. We reset the breaker and restarted the generator and it’s returned to working properly, but this breaker has never tripped in the previous 11 years so it’s a bit unusual and worthy of investigation.

Position: 60°59.19’N, 5°18.58’E

We store all navigation, weather, electrical, and engine data available on the boat into a database every five seconds and this goes back many years. In the case of the generator this data goes back to 2013. What we found in looking through the data is at the time of the generator fault, the generator was running properly, dropped to 167V and then hit 0V. Likely the 167V is just the field breaker releasing and the voltage falling in less than a seconds from 240V to 0V, and we just happened to see 167V as the field collapsed.

That data point is probably not interesting but in continuing to dig around the data and looking for anomalies, we found that starting 4 weeks back the generator would very rarely show a high voltage excursion where it would briefly jump up over 260V. 260V is higher than it should be but it’s unlikely to do damage. What was a definite concern is there were 4 recorded instances of up over 300V and one as high as 338V. These voltage levels will put the 240V equipment on the boat at risk so, as soon as we saw these data points, we shut down the generator.

Position: 60°59.19’N, 5°18.58’E

We don’t really know for sure the generator AVR (automatic voltage regulator) is at fault, but it looks probable and we can’t operate at these voltage levels safely. We also had a recent situation where the generator field winding breaker tripped. We suspect this is also related to the AVR problem. We replaced the AVR and here we’re installing the final of the 4 fasteners that attach the AVR to the generator junction box.

Update 12/16/2020: 2 months later, there have been no high voltage excursions so it appears the AVR change has corrected the problem.

Position: 60°57.90’N, 5°12.71’E

A pink sky a half-hour after an 8:45am sunrise as we head out on a tender tour from the anchorage at Austgulfjorden.

Position: 60°57.91’N, 5°12.52’E

Bundled up in our Mustang suits for a tender tour with the temperature at 42°F (5°C).

Position: 60°57.87’N, 5°11.47’E

Near-perfect reflection on a windless day in Austgulfjorden.

Position: 60°57.44’N, 5°7.78’E

The Gulen area has some excellent cold-water diving with many undersea wrecks and excellent underwater life. The Gulen Dive Resort “house reef” has the highest documented nudibranch species count in the Atlantic, with 73 different species found.

Over 3,000 Nudibranch species live throughout the world’s oceans—their fantastic forms and psychedelic colors make them among our favorite sea creatures. So much so that we named our boat after one. Dirona Albolineata is the Alabaster Nudibranch, an invertebrate indigenous to the Puget Sound that we often saw when scuba diving there.

Position: 60°58.10’N, 5°7.41’E

Leaving our big Mustang suits in the tender for a walk ashore at the Gulating Millennium Park. The suits are great in the tender at speed, but too warm for walking ashore. We just toss the suits on over our winter coats and hiking pants, so it’s easy to “change” back into street clothes again.

Position: 60°58.14’N, 5°7.24’E

The Gulating was the site of Norway’s annual parliamentary assembly from 900-1300AD, believed to have been established by Viking king Harald Fairhair. After 1300, the assembly was held in Bergen, where the Gulating Court of Appeal still sits today. This memorial was erected on the site in 2005 to commemorate the 1,000 years of the Gulating.

Position: 60°58.05’N, 5°7.06’E

Walking a short trail from the Gulating Memorial up to 209ft (64m) Guloytoppen on the island of Guloy.

Position: 60°57.98’N, 5°6.97’E

Nice view west down Gulafjorden from 209ft (64m) Guloytoppen on the island of Guloy at the Gulating Millennium Park.

Position: 60°59.18’N, 5°18.53’E

Back at Dirona anchored at the head of Austgulfjorden in wonderfully calm conditions.

Position: 60°59.19’N, 5°18.61’E

We’ve just crossed an amazing 250 hours on our tender since taking delivery in Harlingen, NL two and a half years ago.

Position: 60°58.02’N, 5°11.24’E

About to pass under the bridge across the mouth of Austgulfjorden as we exit back into the main arm of Gulafjorden. The weather is a lot nicer than when we passed under yesterday.

Position: 60°59.96’N, 5°10.40’E

Approaching the narrow neck at the entrance Nordgulvagen.

Position: 61°0.26’N, 5°10.74’E

Our anchorage in Nordgulvagen off Austgulfjorden in 101 ft (31m) of water on 325 ft (99m) rode.

Position: 61°0.21’N, 5°10.69’E

Calm waters looking towards the entry channel from the anchorage at Nordgulvagen shortly after sunrise.